SIBOR stands for Singapore Interbank Offered Rate
''Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikke ...
'' 25 July 2012 and is a daily reference rate A reference rate is a rate that determines pay-offs in a financial contract and that is outside the control of the parties to the contract. It is often some form of LIBOR rate, but it can take many forms, such as a consumer price index, a house pri ...
based on the interest rates at which bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets.
Becau ...
s offer to lend ''unsecured'' funds to other banks in the Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
wholesale money market
The money market is a component of the economy that provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of a year or less.
As short-term securities became a commodity, the money market became a compon ...
(or interbank market). It is similar to the widely used LIBOR ( London Interbank Offered Rate), and Euribor
The Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) is a daily reference rate, published by the European Money Markets Institute, based on the averaged interest rates at which Eurozone banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the euro ...
(Euro Interbank Offered Rate). Using SIBOR is more common in the Asian region and set by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS).
SIBOR comes in 1-, 3-, 6- , or 12-month tenure. At the end of the tenure, the borrowing bank returns the borrowed fund to the lending bank. The 3-month SIBOR is the most popular rate that loans are pegged to and has been hovering below around 1% in the past few years.
Many floating rate mortgages in the country are pegged to SIBOR due to its transparency. Alternatives to SIBOR include SOR, Fixed-rate mortgages, Combos (Combination of SIBOR and SOR). Although they may be higher or lower than SIBOR at any point of time, they usually move in tandem with the direction of SIBOR and are used by banks to help price loans.
See also
*Adjustable-rate mortgage
A variable-rate mortgage, adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM), or tracker mortgage is a mortgage loan with the interest rate on the note periodically adjusted based on an index which reflects the cost to the lender of borrowing on the credit markets.Wie ...
*Fixed-rate mortgage
A fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) is a mortgage loan where the interest rate on the note remains the same through the term of the loan, as opposed to loans where the interest rate may adjust or "float". As a result, payment amounts and the duration of ...
*Singapore Swap Offer Rate (SOR)
Singapore Dollar Swap Offer Rate (SOR) is an implied interest rate, determined by examining the spot and forward foreign exchange rate
In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. ...
*Euribor
The Euro Interbank Offered Rate (Euribor) is a daily reference rate, published by the European Money Markets Institute, based on the averaged interest rates at which Eurozone banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the euro ...
* TIBOR
*Prime rate
A prime rate or prime lending rate is an interest rate used by banks, usually the interest rate at which banks lend to customers with good credit. Some variable interest rates may be expressed as a percentage above or below prime rate.
Use in dif ...
*TED spread
The TED spread is the difference between the interest rates on interbank loans and on short-term U.S. government debt ("T-bills"). TED is an acronym formed from ''T-Bill'' and ''ED'', the ticker symbol for the Eurodollar futures contract.
Ini ...
*LIBOR-OIS spread
An overnight indexed swap (OIS) is an interest rate swap (''IRS'') over some given term, e.g. 10Y, where the periodic fixed payments are tied to a given fixed rate while the periodic floating payments are tied to a floating rate calculated from ...
*LIBOR
The London Inter-Bank Offered Rate is an interest-rate average calculated from estimates submitted by the leading banks in London. Each bank estimates what it would be charged were it to borrow from other banks. The resulting average rate is u ...
*HIBOR
Hong Kong Inter-bank Offered Rate, (or HIBOR, Chinese: 香港銀行同業拆息), is the annualized rate charged for inter-bank lending on Hong Kong Dollar (HKD) denominated instruments, for a specified period ranging from overnight to one year. ...
* SAIBOR
References
External links
Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS)
Mortgage
Mortgage industry of Singapore
Reference rates
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